


Brighter Than the Sun

by Janie Iscariot (TheOtherSarahJane)



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Banter, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Heartwarming, definite romantic vibes tho, papyrus has a crush, papyrus is artistic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 07:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9063076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOtherSarahJane/pseuds/Janie%20Iscariot
Summary: Papyrus is a little down after a particularly hard training session, so Undyne decides to console him with a little tea and relaxation and, in the process, learns about her new friend's artistic side.





	

Undyne breathed in the steam floating up from the teacups she carried, the warm air and subtle scent relaxing her already. She took a few more steps and Papyrus’s tall form came into view. He was sitting down–that was something of a relief. Normally she had to order him to settle down and rest before he’d so much as stop moving for a second. He was always going, that one.

Now, though, he was still, and as Undyne came closer she could see he’d taken one of his red gloves off and was dipping his fingers in the cool waters of the river in front of him. Seeing him relax was reassuring. Training hadn’t gone very well today. Most of his attacks had been halfhearted or missed entirely, and as much as Papyrus seemed to be incapable of getting down on himself, it had to be taking a toll on him. Her heart clenched as she thought of how hard she’d been on him–it was necessary, she knew; if she was going to send him into battle he’d be seeing far worse than the commands she dished out in training. But it didn’t make it any easier to do, especially with him, of all people, so sweet and upbeat. Maybe the tea would help make up for it. She’d made sure to grab the cups they’d made for each other last week–it had been Papyrus’ idea to find some plain mugs and paint them up for each other, and though initially Undyne hadn’t seen what the big deal was, it had turned out to be loads of messy, colorful fun. Hopefully that would help bring his spirits up.

He didn’t seem to notice her come up behind him, even with the teacups softly clanking and rattling atop their tray. For a moment she considered a friendly noogie to keep him on his toes, but that would’ve spilled everything, and she really didn’t want to have to go and wait for it to boil again. She settled for clearing her throat instead.

“Got the tea,” She said, and he jumped.

“OH! THANK YOU, UNDYNE!”

She handed him his cup–the one with the bones on it–and sat down next to him, putting down the tray for a second to roll up her jeans to the knee and dip her legs in the water. The liquid wrapped around her scaled skin, cool and pleasant, and she brought her teacup, painted with scales and little fish eyes, to her lips and took a sip. Her muscles began to relax and she let out a sigh of contentment. They normally just hung out at her house when they were done with training, or sometimes she’d go over to Snowdin to stay with him, but today the tranquility of the nearby river had called to her, and she thought it could do them both some good. The crystals and algae growing at the bottom glowed with life, casting a soft blue light over both of them, and as she moved her feet about, the cavern around them echoed with the faint sounds of water sloshing.

Next to her, Papyrus held his cup in his hands and stared down into the amber tea. He was smiling, as always, but he was much more quiet than normal. Sympathy tugged at her conscience, but before she could think of anything to say, he spoke.

“UNDYNE?” He asked.

“Yeah?”

“DO YOU THINK I’LL EVER BE PART OF THE ROYAL GUARD?”

The question took Undyne aback a bit, and she paused before answering. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure how likely it was. They’d only been training for a couple months, but from what she could see he didn’t seem to really be cut out for soldiering. He was a fantastic fighter, though, and had some of the best control over his abilities that Undyne had ever seen, so she nodded in response.

“Sure,” she told him, hoping she was right. “We’ve got a little ways to go with our training, but I’m sure you’ll get there eventually!”

That seemed to reassure him somewhat, but he remained oddly silent, gazing pensively into the water in front of them. He seemed more thoughtful and less dejected, though, so Undyne let him be in favor of taking another sip of tea. She wasn’t the best with words, but Papyrus usually had no problem saying whatever was on his mind–bizarre as it may be at times–so she waited, bringing her cup up to take another sip and letting her eyes linger on the little strokes of paint on the sides. The amount of detail really was pretty neat–the scales looked like they were shimmering, even though they hadn’t used shiny paint, and the eyes had little highlights in them that made them look so much more lively. She stole a peek at the cup she’d decorated for him. It was actually the third she’d made that day–the other two had gotten broken under the force of her enthusiasm, and she wasn’t patient enough to glue them back together. Compared to hers, it was…well, Papyrus had called it “minimalist” and “abstract,” and she wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but she was pretty certain that it would have been insulting if anyone but Papyrus had said it.

At any rate, there were bones on it, so he’d loved it. Maybe she should turn the conversation to that. Might cheer him up a bit. By now, he’d been silent for a few minutes, and there was something so unbearably sad about seeing him out of it like this.

“Looks like these came out pretty nice, huh, Papyrus?” She gestured toward the cups. “You were right, making these was a great idea! I didn’t know you could paint so well.”

Papyrus perked up a little at that.

“OF COURSE!” He got a little spark in his eye. “ONLY THE BEST FROM THE GREAT PAPYRUS! INDEED, I HAVE DEVOTED COUNTLESS HOURS TO THE PURSUIT OF THE ARTS. A TRUE RENAISSANCE SKELETON! THAT’S PAPYRUS!”

Success! “You do art stuff? I didn’t know that.”

Papyrus nodded. “I LOVE ART! I POST LOTS OF IT ONLINE, YOU KNOW. EVERYONE LOVES IT!”

“Really? Can I see it?”

Papyrus practically lit up at that. “YOU WANT TO SEE IT?” he asked, then quickly contained himself. “ER, I MEAN, OF COURSE YOU WANT TO SEE IT! AND YOU WILL! BUT. UM. I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING RIGHT NOW.” He chewed on a finger, seemingly deep in thought.

“OH!” he exclaimed after a moment. “I KNOW! DO YOU REMEMBER THE BRIDGE OUTSIDE OF SNOWDIN?”

Undyne tilted her head, a little confused. “The big one, you mean? By Greater Dog’s station? What about it?”

“YES, THAT ONE! MY MAGNUM OPUS. IT USED TO BE PLAIN STONE, BUT IT HAS SINCE BEEN GRACED WITH MY BRUSH. NOW, IN A MASTERPIECE OF CAMOUFLAGE, I HAVE CLEVERLY DISGUISED IT AS A BRIDGE!” He gave an elaborate flourish of his hand as he spoke.

Undyne blinked. Was he talking about that weird rock formation thing that used to be there? She didn’t go out to Snowdin Forest all that often because of how cold it was, so she hadn’t consciously noticed the change, but now that she thought about it, the bridge she passed over to check up on the Forest patrols was the same place where the really long rock had been, and though she’d usually been rushing over it too quickly to pay it much attention, it had seemed oddly solid for a bridge…

“Wait. That bridge…did you make that whole thing?” She asked. Papyrus nodded proudly.

“I PAINTED THE ENTIRE THING! I ALSO ADDED THE RAILS. BECAUSE SAFETY IS IMPORTANT!”

Undyne just stared at him, slackjawed.

“Papyrus…” Undyne gaped. “You took god knows how long to hyper-realistically paint over a gigantic rock formation…to look like a bridge?”

Papyrus’ smile suddenly stiffened. “…YES?”

“Papyrus, that…IS AWESOME!” Undyne nearly dropped her tea out of excitement as she practically lunged toward her best friend. A little of the liquid sloshed out of her cup and into the river, disturbing the calm surface.

Papyrus jumped backwards a little bit at her reaction. “R-REALLY?”

Her voice echoed in the cavern as she spoke, loudly and excitedly.

“Yeah, really! That must have taken, like, forever! But you did the whole thing, in the snow, because…well, I don’t really know why, but that doesn’t matter because that takes PASSION! You painted that super long rock, just to show that you could, and even added rails on like a real bridge! And it was convincing enough that I didn’t even notice! You could’ve just half-assed it, or done something smaller, but you didn’t! That’s so cool!”

For a moment Papyrus looked a little taken aback, but he quickly recovered, chest puffed out and eyes sparkling.

“WOWIE. I SUPPOSE WHEN YOU PUT IT THAT WAY IT IS PRETTY COOL,” he grinned widely, unable to hide the pink glow in his cheeks.

“Hell yeah it is! Oh, hey!” Undyne’s fins perked up nearly to the ceiling with excitement. “You should draw me!”

“UH. REALLY?”

“Yeah! I bet you could make me look super cool! Just like in those human cartoons Alphys shows me!”

“OKAY!” Undyne’s excitement was infectious, and Papyrus found himself with his fist dramatically clenched in front of him, ready to rush into action. It seemed to be a pretty typical side effect of hanging out with Undyne. “I, PAPYRUS, WILL DRAW YOU!”

Realization dawned on him a second later, though, and he lowered his hand to rest on his teacup. “…AS SOON AS I HAVE SOMETHING TO DRAW WITH!”

Undyne blinked. “Oh yeah, huh. Here, lemme go bring you a boulder! I’m sure there must be one around here that I haven’t crushed yet.” She hurriedly set her tea aside and jumped to her feet.

“BOULDER? WHAT? UNDYNE, WAIT!”

Undyne huffed and paused in the middle of turning around. “What? Carving my face into a boulder is the same thing as drawing, right?”

“OF COURSE! IF BY ‘EXACTLY THE SAME’ YOU MEAN 'NOT AT ALL THE SAME.’ ”

“Oh.” Undyne pouted. “It’s been so long since I suplexed something giant, though…”

“YOU JUST SUPLEXED AN ENTIRE BRIDGE YESTERDAY!” Papyrus gave her an incredulous look. “IT TOOK FOREVER TO PUT BACK TOGETHER!”

“Exactly! It’s been SO LONG!”

Papyrus shook his head, dismissing that. He wasn’t sure what her preoccupation with suplexes was. He could lift things, too, but you didn’t see him chucking peoples’ souls around willy-nilly.

“I DON’T NEED A BOULDER. MAYBE JUST A PEN AND PAPER?” He suggested, returning to the topic at hand. “OR A PAINTBRUSH AND PAINTS? I DO LIKE PAINTING BETTER, IF YOU HAVE THE SUPPLIES FOR IT.”

Undyne brought a hand to her chin thoughtfully, and her fins relaxed against her head.

“Hmm…I don’t paint, so I don’t have brushes, or much in the way of scratch paper…oh! But I know who might! Stay here!”

Before Papyrus could say anything more she was off, sprinting at maximum speed toward the room with all the echo flowers. He repressed a momentary shudder at the thought of the place. Undyne was braver than he was, to live here and be so comfortable running around with creepy flowers whispering all around her. But then, Undyne was probably the bravest monster he knew.

Even with the thought of the Echo Flowers, though, he had to admit he was starting to feel a little better.

He didn’t have to wait long. Not even five minutes later Undyne came running back in, clutching a piece of paper in one hand and some kind of writing implement in the other.

“Here!” She rushed back to where he was by the water and lay the paper out on the tray, giving him a smooth surface to work on.

“I was hoping Gerson had some scrap paper, but all he had was this notebook that was all torn up. I convinced him to let me take a page out of it, though. This is the nicest one I could find.”

Thankfully, the paper wasn’t lined, and it actually looked to be fairly thick and of pretty nice quality. It looked like it might be something out of one of those handwritten books with the clothlike covers that would wash down with the humans’ trash every once in a while. It certainly wasn’t the worst Papyrus could have hoped for.

“Oh, and he didn’t have a pen, but he did have this lying around! Said he found it in the dump the other day and didn’t think it was worth enough to sell.”

She lay a small paintbrush down on top of the paper. It was a little scuffed up, the paint on the handle peeling and a few bristles stuck out at odd angles, but usable. As soon as Undyne laid it down, however, something appeared to dawn on her and she frowned, her fins drooping.

“Oh,” she said, somewhat disappointed. “I guess you still don’t have any paints…damn.”

“AH. INDEED WE DON’T.” Papyrus brought his hand up to chew on a finger thoughtfully. His eyes wandered downward, to the little cup Undyne had made for him, still half-full of tea.

The tea…

“WAIT!” Papyrus exclaimed, his face suddenly alight. “I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO DO! PAPYRUS HAS ONCE AGAIN PROVEN TO BE THE MOST PREPARED!”

He straightened out the bristles on the brush as best as he could manage, then, as Undyne looked on in confusion, he dipped the brush into the tea and tested it on the bottom corner of the paper.

It was faint, only subtly visible with the soft light from the crystals at the bottom of the river, but it left a little yellowish-brown mark. They both simultaneously looked up to share a glance of pure glee.

“Papyrus, you’re a genius!” Undyne gushed as Papyrus let out a triumphant cackle. Immediately, Undyne ran a few paces away from him and struck as heroic a pose as she could imagine.

“Draw me like this! You’ve gotta make me look SUPER COOL! Or else I’ll…”

“YOU’LL WHAT?”

“I’ll…uh…GIVE YOU NOOGIES FOR ALL ETERNITY! FUHUHUHU!”

“YOU’RE JUST GOING TO DO THAT ANYWAY!” Papyrus’ rebuttal carried no bite, and his persistent smile betrayed his amusement at her antics. She was standing in the middle of the cavern, one knee bent and leaning so far forward she looked practically ready to topple over, a fist dramatically raised to her face. She was trying to hold a gritty, determined expression, but was failing miserably at holding back her doofy grin. Not that he was doing any better at keeping his own contained. No one ever seemed to take an interest in much of anything he did, but especially not his art–usually Sans would make a few passing quips if he happened to catch him in the middle of working on something, but that was pretty much his default response to anything when he bothered to engage, which in and of itself was fairly rare. He never took the time to actually look at any of Papyrus’ work, to appreciate the effort and detail he put into things. Likewise, whenever he’d tried to show off anything he did to the townsfolk in Snowdin, he’d get, at best, a quick smile and a pat on the head. And it never seemed to vary much from that, no matter how grand or how amazing a piece he attempted. After awhile he’d simply given up trying to show anyone anything. If they didn’t understand greatness, it was their own loss. They’d see in time, once he got good enough. At least, he hoped they would. They had to.

But this–this was the first time someone had ever wanted him to draw anything, much less paint a picture of them. And the fact that it was Undyne, of all people? He was practically beside himself with giddiness. This was going to be the best he could muster, an absolute masterpiece of portraiture–she deserved nothing less.

Or, at least, it would be, if Undyne would stay still for longer than five seconds.

“UNDYNE, I CAN’T PAINT YOU IF YOU KEEP MOVING!” Papyrus chastised her lightly as she conjured up a spear and pretended to stab the air with it. A small pile of discarded spears from poses past was already gathering at her feet, glowing brightly and sending colorful rays of light across her skin and clothes. Undyne grinned sheepishly at him and adjusted her shoulders to look more squared.

“Sorry, Papyrus,” she said. “Here, I think this pose should be good. Just gotta…wait, no! I should be holding TWO spears! Gimme a sec–”

After a couple more minutes of reposing and conjuring increasingly concerning quantities of spears, Papyrus finally sighed in resignation. This wasn’t going to end anytime soon. He was just going to have to come up with his own idea and hope for the best. He let her tire herself out coming up with more and more ridiculous stances–he knew it’d give him plenty of time to work–and turned his attention to the painting.

Undyne. He had to paint Undyne. And not just paint her, really capture her. He closed his eyes and thought for a few moments. When he thought of Undyne, what did he think of?

When he had his answer, he set to work.

It didn’t take him long–as always, he found it so easy to slip into the rhythm of it, placing each brush stroke with care and being mindful of how quickly the tea dried. Undyne was far too busy showing off to watch him work–by this point she’d devolved into just flexing and seeking out the heaviest things to lift up over her head–but that was a good thing. This way he could surprise her.

A few minutes after finishing, Papyrus dabbed the last section with his finger to make sure there weren’t any wet spots left, then chirped to Undyne that it was ready. Nervousness rose in his head and chest, and he couldn’t keep from wringing his hands as she came bounding over to look.

Undyne wasn’t sure what to expect when she saw the finished product. How many spears had he managed to cram in? Did he do the one where she was bench pressing Woshua? If not she hoped he’d at least seen it, it wasn’t easy to get a handle on that little guy–

She paused, surprised, when she saw it.

There, in washed-out hues of amber and brown, was her, but she wasn’t bench-pressing or throwing spears or suplexing. It was just her, looking out with a big, toothy grin, the kind that spread from one perked-up head fin to another. It wasn’t at all what she’d expected, but there was something so warm, so happy, so genuine about it that she couldn’t help but echo the smile she saw.

“Wow,” she breathed, as Papyrus looked on anxiously for her to say something. “I look really nice!” Giggling a little, she turned to him and gave him a playful punch to the shoulder.

“I told you to make me look cool, though! This isn’t cool at all,” she lightly ribbed him, her beaming face revealing her words were free of any actual bite. Papyrus blinked and looked at her as if he didn’t understand.

“YOU ARE COOL!” He said. “YOU’RE ALWAYS COOL. I DON’T THINK I’VE EVER SEEN YOU DO SOMETHING NOT COOL!”

“Really? Even that time I surfed down the big waterfall so many times I made myself hurl?”

Papyrus winced. “OKAY, EXCEPT FOR THAT.”

Undyne laughed at that, then gently took the painting in her hand, careful not to fold it or scratch it up with her claws. Papyrus had really done that. It even smelled faintly of the golden flower tea he’d used–it just added to the warmth she felt when she saw it.

After staring at it for a few more moments, she turned back to her friend.

“You know something, Papyrus?” She asked.

“OF COURSE I KNOW SOMETHING! I KNOW LOTS OF THINGS!” He put a hand on his chest as if offended, but then a look of confusion took over. “WAIT, WHAT DO I KNOW AGAIN?”

Undyne flashed a grin at him, toothy and wide.

“You’re pretty cool too,” she said.

Many times, Asgore had told her about the Sun they apparently had on the Surface. She didn’t know much of anything about it, other than it was bright, brighter than anything they had here. And part of her didn’t know when, if ever, she was going to see it. But she was sure that however bright it might be when she did, a hundred of them couldn’t equal half the smile Papyrus gave her in that moment.

**Author's Note:**

> My contribution to the Undyrus Secret Santa on tumblr! The request was Papyrus and Undyne taking a break from training, which I pretty much just used as a shameless excuse to shove in my "Papyrus is actually a really great artist that no one ever acknowledges and also has a massive crush on Undyne that he doesn't really recognize or understand" headcanons and to elaborate on the phone call where Papyrus mentions that the Snowdin "bridge" is actually just a really long rock he painted over. Hyper-realistically. To look like a bridge. For some reason. Bless you, Papyrus.
> 
> Also, yes, I know that realistically you probably couldn't actually paint with tea because it would be too washed out and faint but you know what *holds up artistic license card*


End file.
